visit us: law-in-action.com

How States Subsidize Exports: the US Export-Import Bank

[T]he Export-Import Bank of the U.S., which was so successful at expanding exports that scores of other nations have copied the model. Now — for the second time in a year — small-government advocates are trying to abolish the bank, saying it distorts the free market by using tax dollars to pick business winners and losers. …

Unless Congress acts, the Export-Import Bank’s lending authority will expire June 30, 2015. Tea Party Republicans, who want to limit government intervention in the free market, say the bank provides a form of corporate welfare. Some airlines, including Delta, say the bank’s loan guarantees for Boeing jets unfairly subsidize its international competitors. Congress is now considering four bills that would reauthorize the lender with some reforms. But Republican Representative Jeb Hensarling, head of the House committee that oversees the bank, is still calling for its abolition.

The Export-Import Bank was started by President Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1934 as a New Deal program to boost exports….It provides loan guarantees, loans and insurance to help foreign companies — sometimes those with less-than-perfect credit — buy U.S. goods when private banks can’t or won’t make loans in industries including aerospace, energy and manufacturing. Though Democrats widely support Ex-Im, Barack Obama criticized it while campaigning for president in 2008, calling it “little more than a fund for corporate welfare” at a time when opposition to government spending, triggered by the bailouts that year, was growing. Ex-Im authorizationssoared, reaching a peak of $114 billion in total outstanding financial commitments at the end of fiscal 2013, from $58 billion in 2008. President Obama now supports Ex-Im reauthorization.

In May 2015, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce began a national ad campaign in favor of the bank, arguing that without it, jobs might be lost to competitors in China or Russia. …[Another issue] is “corruption” at Ex-Im, after a former bank employee pleaded guilty to accepting over $78,000 in bribes between 2006 and 2013. While about 90 percent of Ex-Im’s deals help U.S. small businesses, an analysis by Veronique de Rugy, a bank critic at George Mason University, found that Boeing benefited from about 30 percent of the bank’s authorizations in 2013.